Cobham: "How do you make that good? "
The court: "It is against the determination of holy Church."
The archbishop: "We sent you a writing concerning the faith of the blessed Sacrament, clearly determined by the Church of Rome, our mother, and by the holy doctors."
Lord Cobham: "I know none holier than is Christ and his apostle. And for that determination, I wot, it is none of theirs, for it standeth not with the Scriptures, but is manifestly against them. If it be the Church's, as ye say it is, it hath been hers only since she received the great poison of worldly possessions, and not afore."
The archbishop: "What do you think of holy Church? "
Lord Cobham: "Holy Church is the number of them which shall be saved, of which Christ is the head. Of this Church, one part is in heaven with Christ; another in purgatory (you say); and the third is here on earth."
Doctor John Kemp: "Holy Church hath determined that, every Christian man ought to be shriven by a priest. What say ye to this?"
Lord Cobham: "A diseased or sore wounded man had need to have a wise surgeon and a true. Most necessary were it, therefore, to be first shriven unto God, who only knoweth our diseases, and can help us. I deny not in this the going to a priest, if he be a man of good life and learning. If he be a vicious man, I ought rather to flee from him; for I am more likely to have infection than cure from him."
Doctor Kemp: "Christ ordained St. Peter to be his Vicar here on earth, whose see is the Church of Rome; and he granted the same power to all St. Peter's successors in that see. Believe ye not this?"
Lord Cobham: "He that followeth St. Peter most nearly in holy living is next unto him in succession."
Another doctor: "What do ye say of the Pope?"
Lord Cobham: "He and you together maketh the whole great Antichrist. The Pope is the head; you, bishops, priests, prelates, and monks, are the body; and the Begging Friars are the tail, for they hide the wickedness of you both with their sophistry."
Doctor Kemp: "Holy Church hath determined that it is meritorious to go on pilgrimage to holy places, and there to worship holy relics and images of saints and martyrs. What say ye to this?"
Lord Cobham: "I owe them no service by any commandment of God. It were better to brush the cobwebs from them and put them away, or bury them out of sight, as ye do other aged people, which are God's images. But this I say unto you, and I would all the world should know it, that with your shrives and idols, your reigned absolutions and pardons, ye draw unto you the substance, wealth, and chief pleasures of all Christian realms."
A priest: "What, sir, will ye not worship good images?"
Lord Cobham: "What worship should I give unto them?"
Friar Palmer: "Sir, will ye worship the cross of Christ, that he died upon?"
Lord Cobham: "Where is it?"
The friar: "I put the case, sir, that it were here even now before you."
Lord Cobham: "This is a wise man, to put to me an earnest question of a thing, and yet he himself knows not where the thing is. Again I ask you, what worship should I give it?"
A priest: "Such worship as St. Paul speaks of, and that is this, 'God forbid that I should joy, but only in the cross of Jesus Christ.'"
The Bishop of London: "Sir, ye wot well that Christ died on a material cross."
Lord Cobham: "Yea, and I wot also that our salvation came not by that material cross, but by him alone that died thereon; and well I wot that holy St. Paul rejoiced in no other cross but Christ's passion and death."
The archbishop: "Sir, the day passeth away. Ye must either submit yourself to the ordinance of holy Church, or else throw yourself into most deep danger. See to it in time, for anon it will be too late."
Lord Cobham: "I know not to what purpose I should submit me."
The archbishop: "We once again require you to look to yourself, and to have no other opinion in these matters, save that is the universal faith and belief of the holy Church of Rome; and so, like an obedient child, return to the unity of your mother. See to it, I say, in time, for yet ye may have remeid, whereas anon it will be too late."
Lord Cobham: "I will none otherwise believe in these points than I have told you before. Do with me what you will."
The archbishop: "We must needs do the law: we must proceed to a definite sentence, and judge and condemn you for an heretic."
Hereupon the archbishop stood up to pronounce sentence. The whole assembly — bishops, doctors, and friars — rose at the same time, and uncovered. The primate drew forth two papers which had been prepared beforehand, and proceeded to read them. The first set forth the heresies of which Lord Cobham had been convicted, and the efforts which the court, "desiring the health of his soul," had made to bring him to "the unity of the Church;" but he, "as a child of iniquity and darkness, had so hardened his heart that he would not listen to the voice of his pastor." "We, thereupon," continued the archbishop, turning to the second paper, "judge, declare, and condemn the said Sir John Oldcastle, knight, for a most pernicious and detestable heretic, committing him to the secular jurisdiction and power, to do him thereupon to death."
This sentence Arundel pronounced with a sweet and affable voice, the tears trickling down his face. It is the primate himself who tells us so; otherwise we should not have known it; for certainly we can trace no signs of pity or relenting in the terms of the sentence. "I pronounced it," says the archbishop, referring to the sentence dooming Sir John to the fire, "in the kindest and sweetest manner, with a weeping countenance." If the primate wept, no one saw a tear on the face of Lord Cobham. "Turning to the multitude," says Bale, "Lord Cobham said, with a most cheerful voice, 'Though ye judge my body, which is but a wretched thing, yet can ye do no harm to my soul. He that created it will, of his infinite mercy, save it. Of that I have no manner of doubt.' Then falling down on his knees, and lifting up his eyes, with hands outstretched toward heaven, he prayed, saying, 'Lord God eternal, I beseech thee, for thy great mercy's sake, to forgive my pursuers, if it be thy blessed will.' He was thereupon delivered to Sir Robert Morley, and led back to the Tower."
The sentence was not to be executed till afmr fifty days. This respite, so unusual, may have been owing to a lingering affection for his old friend on the part of the king, or it may have been prompted by the hope that he would submit himself to the Church, and that his recantation would deal a blow to the cause of Lollardism. But Lord Cobham had counted the cost, and his firm resolve was to brave the horrors of Smithfield, rather than incur the guilt of apostacy. His persecutors, at last, despaired of bringing him in a penitent's garb, with lighted tapers, to the door of St. Paul's, as they had done humbler and weaker confessors, there to profess his sorrow for having scoffed at the prodigious mystery of transubstantiation, and placed the authority of the Scriptures above that of the Church. But if a real recantation could not be had, a spurious one might be fabricated, and given forth as the knight's confession. This was the expedient to which his enemies had now recourse. They gave out that "Sir John had now become a good man, and had lowlily submitted himself in all things to holy Church;" and thereupon they produced and published a written "abjuration," in which they made Lord Cobham profess the most unbounded homage for the Pope (John XXIII.!), "Christ's Vicar on earth and head of the Church," his clergy, his Sacraments, his laws, his pardons and dispensations, and recommend "all Christian people to observe, and also most meekly to obey, the aforesaid;" and further, they made him, in this "abjuration," renounce as "errors and heresies" all the doctrines he had maintained before the bishops, and, laying his hand upon the "holy evangel of God," to swear that he should nevermore henceforth hold these heresies, "or any other like unto them, wittingly."
The fabricators of this "abjuration" had overshot the mark. But small discernment, truly, was needed to detect so clumsy a forgery. Its authors were careful, doubtless, that the eye of the man whom it so grievously defamed should not light upon it; and yet it would appear that information was conveyed to Cobham, in his prison, of the part the priests were making him act in public; for we find him sending out to rebut the slanders and falsehoods that